


In Which Hermann is Bullied into Using Twitter

by IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Fluff, M/M, Millennials, Newt POV, Social Media, so sweet I have cavaties now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 02:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14967527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou/pseuds/IDoNotBiteMyThumbAtYou
Summary: It’s 2018 and this sleeping-together thing is very new. Newt decides to push his luck.





	In Which Hermann is Bullied into Using Twitter

**Author's Note:**

> Technically takes place in my (Help) universe, but with only the most oblique references. Perfectly fine to read as a stand-alone.

 

Newt had a constant stream of thoughts barrelling around in his head at any given moment. A consuming burbling brilliance that both leeched him of energy, and animated him to absurd levels of productivity.

Each thought seemed equally important, and equally World changing. And indeed, even his smallest flyaway brain farts contained as much insight as your average graduate thesis. All this needed somewhere to go. Learning had helped, acquiring degrees until someone had taken him aside and begged him to stop. Teaching had helped. His students had loved his enthusiasm and loathed his grading. He had only ever asked for passion, but what student could hope to match his exhausting bottomless well of passion? Sometimes he fixated on a task until it was done and he looked up and hours or days had passed. Sometimes he ran up and down the hall in his jeans until physical exhaustion made his brain stop buzzing.

He was constantly speaking, constantly tweeting, constantly expounding his ideas to the outside world - overflowing so he didn’t drown in the excesses of his own mind. And still, sometimes the only thing to quiet his mind and stop his mouth was Hermann.

It was 2018 of the Worst Timeline (though, they didn’t know it) when things were still good and their fights were still meaningless. July. Just a month after Hermann’s 29th birthday, the night the two of them had given in to exhaustion and desire and said, fuck it! Let’s do this thing, and hope it doesn’t blow up the science division in the process! The relationship was new, and exciting, and - at least to Newt - utterly terrifying. Hermann was not always easy to be around, and Newt often had the impression that one small misstep would ruin everything. He had already made such a _thing_ about their responsibilities to the world, and the _risk_ they were taking by being together that his caution had buried itself under Newt’s skin and blossomed into a flower of grotesquely elevated stakes.

And so Newt was torn between the utter delight that - holy shit! He was allowed to kiss this guy! And a constant low-level anxiety that kept him convinced he was inches away from fucking everything up at any given moment.

It was in this environment of dramatically mixed feelings that Newt got an idea. In a lifetime of genius, it might not have been one of his most brilliant ideas but for what it was worth, it wouldn’t leave him alone: Hermann needed a twitter. The idea rattled around in his brain like background percussion to the atonal cacophony of his usual brain soup. What would Hermann tweet? Who would he follow? He had to know.

So he made one.

He used a very flattering picture of Hermann concentrating at his work for the avatar, and his now-famous jaeger code as the account’s banner. He didn’t write any tweets, and he waited to show him until a moment when Hermann was statistically the most likely to be receptive - minutes after sex. 

Hermann looked at the phone, his expression completely blank and met Newt’s cheeky grin with the smallest 2:00 AM smile twinging at his cheekbones.

“Delete it.” he said.

“OH COME ON.” Newt hollered, cradling the phone to his chest as though to protect it from Hermann’s ungratefulness.

“Get rid of it.”

“Hermann, I swear, if you don’t tweet at least one thing, I will write the most embarrassing tweets I can think of.”

“I’ll report it as a fake.”

“HA! You can’t make a report if you don’t have an account!”

Hermann disentangled himself from Newt’s limbs and studied his face, trying to detect the lies. “I doubt that’s true.”

“This is twitter we’re talking about. They’re not exactly known for their speedy complaint resolution. I’ll tweet stuff that literally only you would find embarrassing. And if you file a complaint they’ll be like, ‘um, that’s a very normal tweet?’”

Hermann narrowed his eyes, “Like what?”

“Pictures of food.”

“ _What?”_

“Complaints about the traffic in LA.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

Hermann gaped in horrified disbelief “My god, you would. Of course you would.”  
Glare met grin for a crackling moment, and then without even a weight shift of warning, Hermann bounded over Newt’s body to lunge at the phone. He had long-limb advantage, but Newt had, you know, very sturdy bones, and was able to use sheer willpower to keep the phone in his possession.

“No. Come oooon Hermann.” Hermann jabbed a sharp elbow into his spine, Newt cackled, “OUCH! Come on it’s fun! It’s just dumb fun. You are allowed to have fun, you know.” the final point escaped like a dart filed a little sharper at the point than Newt had intended. Hermann froze. Oh shit.

“I’m sorry” he said.

Hermann sat up at that and swung his legs off the edge of the bed. Oh shit! Newt was paralyzed for a moment with the utter terror of taking the wrong action. Knowing all the while that doing nothing was also an action, and not at all the right one.

“I should get back to my own bed.” Hermann finally said, and he began to gather whatever clothes of his that were within reach.

“Noooo, Hermann. I’m sorry,” he gently grasped Hermann’s forearm to stop his movement, “come on, Babe, I’m sorry.” whoops.

Hermann flinched - presumably at the unexpected pet name, and Newt went into full-on salvage mode.

“If you weren’t allowed to have fun” he said quickly, trying to angle the earlier barb into a joke (and distract from the pet name. Yikes. A lot of mistakes tonight.), “then, I’m sorry, but what do you call knocking on my door at 1:00 in the morning?”

Hermann looked pointedly at where Newt’s hand still held his arm, “Exercise.” he said blandly.

“Really? Because I would call it a reverse booty call.” Newt squeezed his arm in a display of confidence he did not feel.

Hermann raised an eyebrow, clearly trying to manufacture a look of disdain, but the way he bit his tongue to curb the smile gave him away He removed Newt’s hand with a finger and thumb, the way someone might pick up a dirty cloth.

Newt gasped in exaggerated mock offence, but inside he was cheering with relief that he seemed to have won Hermann back.

But even that relief washed away and the overflowing bee-like buzz of his thoughts stilled when Hermann all but tackled him, pressing him back down to the mattress and settling the weight of his frame on top of him.

His plans to leave, apparently, abandoned.

* * *

  
Just around three in the morning Hermann finally stood to actually leave (for real this time) and before he even knew to look for it, Newt had stolen his phone, installed twitter, and signed in to the dummy account

”One tweet.” he said holding out the phone. “One tweet and the account is gone.”

Hermann took the phone and repeated, grimly, “One tweet.” Pocketed the phone, and left.

* * *

 

The tweet dropped just before lunch. Newt had been checking twitter every five minutes, hoping against hope that the tweet would be there. Composing in his head what sort of tweets one such as Hermann Gottlieb could possibly create. Would it be sarcastic? Short? Would he just write a single word to fulfill his obligation? And so when he picked up his phone to see the notification he nearly dropped it in shock.

It was a tweet of such staggering genius that Newt was forced to sit down. An elegant arc of wit, with just the right surprise twist at the end. In all his imaginings, he hadn’t dreamed that Hermann had this at his fingertips. He went to stand at the foot of Hermann’s ladder.

“Hermann -”

“What did I say about using my given name in public?” he didn’t even pause in his writing.

Good job, Newt! Still messing this up.

”Dr. Gottlieb.” he corrected, and some of his inwardly directed irritation leaked into his voice, “Nice tweet.”

Hermann stiffened and whipped around to check if anyone else in the lab had heard. If they had, they were very carefully pretending not to have.

“As this is a social matter, Dr Geiszler, we will continue this conversation in private.”

“Right. Yes. Yup!” Newt started to back out of the door, “Absolutely. See you at lunch!” and he bolted towards the computer labs to find Tendo.

* * *

  
“Tendo! Tendo!”

Tendo looked up from his station in obvious annoyance. “Man, can you please not drag your gut-soaked self into computer hell here. Some of us don’t get to play mad scientist all day and have to actually work”

The other low-level technicians carefully avoided looking up but many of them failed to hide their horror at Tendo’s irreverence towards one of the top researchers in K-science.

Newt pulled up a chair next to Tendo (“anyone using this chair?” “I think he’s in the bathr-“ “great thanks!”), and held up his phone.

“Hermann did a tweet.” Newt said in a stage-whisper.

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” he handed over the phone

Tendo took it, already delighted and gearing up to mock what would undoubtedly be a pathetic showing. But his look of amusement quickly transformed into one of amazement when he read the tweet “Mother of god.” he said.

“That would have been so much better if you had glasses.”

“You’re right” He reached over, swiped Newt’s glasses (“hey!”), and put them on, “Mother of god.” he said, whipping the glasses off, then: “christ, dude you’re really blind.”

“Yeah thank you.” Newt grabbed them back.

“How is this so good?” Tendo held up the phone

“I don’t KNOW”

“I gotta analyze this.” and he took a moment to squint at the screen in studious concentration “It’s succinct.” he finally said, still not looking up, “It’s clever. It’s well within the character limit and yet... it feels verbose without seeming wordy,” Tendo took his social media very seriously and transformed into a veritable meme-professor when the spirit moved him. “The wit! The charm!”

“I know!”

“I was on the fence about this one, Geiszler,” Tendo said gesturing with the phone but meaning Hermann.

“Show some respect dude.”

“My mind has been changed! I think you’ve bagged yourself a winner.”

“Alright, alright,” Newt snatched his phone back, “let’s not make this weird, please.”

“I mean it! He is now officially invited to Karaoke night.”

Newt cringed at the thought of even bringing that up to Hermann, “we’ll see.”

* * *

Newt didn’t see Hermann at lunch. He ate with Tendo and kept craning his neck to see to the cafeteria doors until Tendo begged him to please, please cut it out, (“I’m getting sympathetic whiplash.”)

Hermann was still at his equations when he came back to the lab, and - as the tweet was a private matter - Newt just had to bite his tongue and stop himself from talking about it.

Hermann also declined his invitation to get dinner. In fact, he didn’t seem to hear the invitation until Newt unceremoniously rattled his ladder. Hermann gripped the railing and glared down at him, “I’m not hungry.” he hissed. And Newt went to dinner alone, regretting himself. He was so worried that he had actually pissed Hermann off that he could barely eat - the food turned his stomach.

Hermann was still in the lab hours later when Newt went in to record one last result before turning in for the night. No one else was in the lab, but Hermann seemed so concentrated that he didn’t dare disturb him.

Newt tried to sleep that night. He thought he’d better not text first. If Hermann was angry, texting would be a bad plan. His imagination tortured him with all the things Herman must be thinking about him. About what a mistake it had been to give Newt even a moment of his precious time. About how childish he was. How unprofessional. He saw in his head the way Hermann would call it off in the morning, citing the mentioning of twitter in a professional setting as one of the major reasons why. But also, that Newt was annoying. And also, that Newt clearly was catching feelings and that was against the rules that neither of them had had the courage to set down but Newt should have known anyway.

Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He put on his slippers, (well, converse. Converse were the closest thing he had to slippers) and tromped over to Hermann’s room. Fist shaking he knocked on the door.

Hermann answered the door in a dressing gown, holding a steaming cup of tea. He wordlessly stepped aside to allow Newt inside. He seemed more wiped than angry, and an uncharitable relief poured into Newt’s belly and cooled his discomfort.

Newt went directly to the bed and sat cross legged in the corner at the head. All this was still very new, but he was at least familiar enough with this room that he knew where to sit. Hermann clumsily settled himself next to him, cradling his mug. They sat like this for a moment, both awkwardly waiting for the other to speak first. Neither quite sure what they felt awkward about. Hermann sighed leaned his head down to rest on Newt’s shoulder. This was also slightly awkward given the unconducive height differential, but Hermann seemed so exhausted that Newt felt it was worth it to make himself as comfortable a headrest as possible.  
Goddamn I can’t believe I actually get to kiss Hermann Gottlieb. Goddamn have I already ruined my chance to kiss Hermann Gottlieb?

Newt thought about asking if he’d had anything to eat that day, but it seemed sort of out of line given that he knew for a fact he hadn’t. Not to mention hypocritical. Now that his stomach wasn’t full of anxious acid, he realized how little he’d eaten at dinner.

Finally, Hermann spoke, “I’m flattered you liked my tweet.”

“Liked it?” Newt nearly shouted to fill the silence, “It was brilliant! You, my friend, are an artist - a poet! - and twitter is your ideal medium.”

Hermann scoffed in distaste

“Ok ok not a poet. Fine. Just real damn good at twitter.”

Hermann gave that little exhale that Newt recognized as his version of a chuckle, “You said you would delete the account if I did a tweet.”

“Yeah but -”

He cut Newt off by producing his phone seemingly out of nowhere and placing it in Newt’s hand, “Delete it, please.”

Newt scrunched his neck to look down at Hermann, “You sure?”

Hermann sat up and nodded his wordless assent.

Newt shook his head and set to work deleting the account “You’re hiding your light under a bushel, my dude.” (are you sure you want to delete your account? Yes. Ok but are you really, really sure? Yes twitter! Jesus fuck!)

“Trust me, Newton. I should not have a twitter account.”

Newt scowled, and was surprised to find an ugly irritation clawing at him, “You’ve got this thing about how you’re not supposed to have fun or even do anything that’s not, like, immediately useful until after we win the war.” he kept his head down, fiddling with the app. He couldn’t have said this if he had been making eye contact, “And like, I kind of respect it in theory, but in practice…” he gestured meaningfully to himself as case-in-point exhibit A. “It’s not really possible! So why set yourself up for failure with this impossible standard? Why beat yourself up for not being able to live up to this monk-life asceticism!” He plopped the phone on the bed between them as punctuation.

Hermann was carefully studying his mug of tea, making his eyes unavailable now that newt was ready to meet them.

“We might all die at the hands of alien monsters sure!” Newt continued a bit more gently, “But we’re alive NOW so why not at least try to enjoy life?” It’s so obviously just to self-flagellate, he thought. Like, it’s so obvious. But he didn’t say that.

“It’s not just that,” Hermann said to his mug of tea, “(though I stand by it). You’ve seen me work, Newton.” He looked up to make frank eye-contact with Newt, “What conclusions can you draw about me from that?”

Newt’s brain short-circuited for a moment. He unconsciously licked his lips while maintaining that slightly panicked, ‘is-this-a-test-or-something-oh-god’ eye contact. Um. Yes. He had. ahem.

Observed Hermann at work. One might even call him a sommelier of the various shades and notes of Hermann’s working postures. You have your scramble-scrawl - when some great revelation waited at the end of a line of chalk and Hermann’s equations scratched like a speeding vehicle over gravel, eager to arrive. There are your vast sweeping equations with smaller equations between the numbers. You have your upside-down and backwards days - slow days where the numbers weren’t working the way he wanted right-side-up and forwards. Those were the days the chalk was most likely to screech.

But no matter what style of work, he was always brilliant. Meticulous. Methodical. Obsessive.

Oh.

Oh fuck. Newt’s shoulders dropped and before he could even apologize Hermann began to explain himself.

“If I were to engage with... twitter or other such frivolous intellectual sinkholes, I know exactly how it would go: I would optimize and obsess. I would waste hours trying to ‘solve’ it. I know myself and I know It’s best if I stay away.”

Newt could see it, actually. Hermann obsessing about ridiculous unwinnable “debates” with morons. Hermann spending hours constructing the perfect 280 character epigrams, or the perfect cutting remark to a pop scientist. Oh yeah. Hermann absolutely was not allowed to get a twitter. And Newt was an asshole.

“So candy crush is out too, huh?” Newt said, voice wavering and betraying his joke for the deflection it was.

“I don’t know what that is,” Hermann said archly, “but probably yes.”

“I’m… so sorry, Gottlieb.”  
“No apologies necessary. You wouldn’t have thought of it.”

“But I should have.”

Hermann tilted his head, puzzlement reading in his eyes, “Not at all.”

Newt felt so stupid and careless. Why did he always do shit like this? Get too excited, barrel over what people actually wanted for the sake of satisfying an impulse or a curiosity. He felt his stomach roil. He didn’t know how to be himself and not steamroller over the people around him. He bit the inside of his cheek and glared at the ground in front of himself. He had to be better than this.

“Newton, there’s something else.”

Oh god. What. What else could he have done? “Hm?” He said with a studied, and unconvincing nonchalance.

“I’ve noticed that since we’ve been... together” Hermann rushed the last word, as though he was afraid to set it down.  
Newt smiled at that. Goddamn this guy for being so endearing.

“You’ve seemed… anxious.”

Damn! You been found out son! Newt went full-on deer in the headlights grimace. “Oh. Yeah?”

“Yes” Hermann said crisply, “And I would like, if you can help it, for you not to be so…” he paused, as though unsure how to classify Newt’s behavior, before landing with some amazement on: “afraid of me. There’s really no need.”  
Newt laughed outright at that, “Have you met yourself? You’re pretty scary, Gottlieb.

Hermann looked down his nose at him imperiously, “and in the lab I would like to continue to inspire a healthy fear. However, in private, this…” his expression softened into one of concern. He set his mug of tea on the bedside table and turned so that he was properly facing Newt, to more clearly articulate his point, “this self-admonishment of yours, your scolding yourself, the excessive apologies. I don’t need it.”

Hermann had seen him. So clearly seen everything Newt had successfully hidden from every other person he had ever liked more than a little, and he wasn’t going to let Newt get away with it and self sabotage. Newt felt grateful, but exposed, “I just don’t want to fuck this up.” He whispered. Nothing had been ruined, but the fear was stubborn and loud, and though Hermann’s reassurances helped, it wouldn’t cure him. The blood pounded in his throat, and he wasn’t totally sure what his face was doing.

“You don’t have to be perfect, Newton. I like you.” Hermann said, and he reached to place a hand at the nape of Newt’s neck in a now-familiar gesture of affection.

“Oh. Rad. I like you too.” he shrugged, “A bit.” A lot. Shit. This happened really fast.

“So please don’t worry that a single mistake will send me running. I’m not some woodland creature to be scared off by a loud noise.” Oh thank god, he was making jokes again. A hint of a smile even stretched his mouth upwards at one corner. “I wouldn’t even be here with you if my threshold for incorrigible childishness was not already shockingly high.”

“Is that was this is,Gottlieb? You tolerating me?”

“Barely.”  
Newt threw back his head and laughed. When he looked back he caught Hermann looking at his throat before meeting his eyes again.

“I’m not. Demonstrative. And I’m sorry if I’ve made you think…” Newt leaned forward to close the narrow distance between them but Hermann dodged away. He wasn’t finished. “I will tell you if you’ve truly misstepped. Please trust me that far. I won’t have you wasting away for the sake of concern towards me.”

“Alright Gottlieb.” He said, exasperated, “No wasting away. Got it.” He tried to surge forward again but this time Hermann placed a finger on his lips to block his path.

“And in private, you can call me Hermann, remember?”

“Right. Herm…” but he didn’t get to finish the word because with just the slightest pressure on the back of his neck, Hermann pressed him forward and stopped his mouth mid-word.  
And, as happened so rarely in his life, but  so easily with this one person, Newt’s mind was quiet and there were no more thoughts to overflow or drown him.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation with Avelera. Who I might as well just credit as my official muse these days.


End file.
